{"id":368305,"date":"2025-10-08T05:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T05:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/368305\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T05:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T05:41:10","slug":"cubs-bcb-after-dark-which-nl-team-has-the-better-chance-of-a-comeback-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/368305\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubs BCB After Dark: Which NL team has the better chance of a comeback?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Tuesday evening here at BCB After Dark: the grooviest gathering of night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and join us. We\u2019re going to stick together until the end. There\u2019s no cover charge. We still have a couple of tables available. Bring your own beverage.<\/p>\n

BCB After Dark\u00a0is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.<\/p>\n

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The Cubs are off today as they lick their wounds and hope to find some way to win the next three elimination games against the Brewers. They\u2019ve done that before. Meanwhile, the Mariners defeated the Tigers 8-4 to take a two games to one lead in theur series, and the Yankees led the Blue Jays 9-6 in the seventh inning at the time After Dark posted.<\/p>\n

Last week, I asked you about Game 3 of the Wild Card Series.<\/a> The Cubs did win that game and so I suppose the answers you gave are irrelevant now. But 26 percent of you predicted that Jameson Taillon would be the player of the game and 24 percent predicted Michael Busch. Those were good guesses.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday night\/Wednesday morning I don\u2019t do a film essay. But I always have time for jazz so those of you who skip that can do so now.<\/p>\n

I suppose it\u2019s time to start putting some Halloween jazz in After Dark, so here is vocalist and pianist Kandace Springs performing the Screamin\u2019 Jay Hawkins classic \u201cI Put a Spell on You.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This is from 2020.<\/p>\n

Welcome back to those of you who skip all that jazz.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to pretend like things are rosy at the moment for the Cubs. There is a very good chance that tomorrow\u2019s game will be the final game of the season for them. Certainly there is an excellent chance that their final game of the season will be against the Brewers sometime before the end of this series.<\/p>\n

But an \u201cexcellent\u201d chance doesn\u2019t mean that there is no chance the Cubs come back. The Cubs have faced a situation where they had to win three straight elimination games in our lifetimes and they won all three of them. None of the current Cubs were on that team, but one current Cub, Carlos Santana, can attest to that from the other side.<\/p>\n

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So let\u2019s assume that the Cubs have a very small but very real chance to advance. I would say that between them and the Phillies, the Cubs have the better chance to advance. They have two games at home. They have Jameson Taillon going tomorrow and he\u2019s been their best pitcher down the stretch\u2014other than the injured Cade Horton. Matthew Boyd would get to start Game 4 on four days rest and then all hands would be on deck for a Game 5.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s not a good chance, but 11 percent of teams down 2 games to 0 in a best-of-five series come back to win it. I\u2019d say the Cubs chances are better than that\u2014maybe 15 to 20 percent. Sure, that\u2019s still an 80 to 85 percent chance that the Brewers advance to the Championship Series, but that\u2019s better than no chance.<\/p>\n

The Phillies are also down two games to none and have to go out to Los Angeles for Games 3 and 4. They have to face Yoshinobu Yamamoto who, after an up-and-down rookie season in MLB, is starting to look like the number-one starter that he was touted as coming out of Japan. And if the Phillies somehow beat Yamamoto, they\u2019re facing Shohei Ohtani and Blake Snell in Games 4 and 5. Sure, the Dodgers bullpen is still terrible and no lead is safe for the Dodgers, but moving Roki Sasaki into the closer\u2019s spot has at least stabilized the back end of the bullpen for LA.<\/p>\n

So tonight\u2019s question is \u201cWho has the better chance of coming back and winning their series\u2014Cubs or Phillies?\u201d Unfortunately, I have to write tonight\u2019s piece before the results of tonight\u2019s Blue Jays\/Yankees game and thus, I can\u2019t include them in the poll. Should the Yankees win, then obviously they have the best chance of coming back because they would only need to win two more games. Should the Blue Jays win, then the Yankees have a zero percent chance of coming back because they will have been eliminated.<\/p>\n

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In case you were wondering, Fangraphs gives the Cubs a 13.8 percent chance of winning this series and the Phillies a 9.8 percent chance of overcoming the Dodgers. (The Yankees had a 15.2 percent chance of winning their series before Game 3, for the record.) So while Fangraphs thinks the Cubs are longshots, they do give them better odds than the Phillies.<\/p>\n

Thank you for stopping by. We need to stick together in times like this. Please get home safely. Don\u2019t forget anything you may have checked. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow night for more BCB After Dark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Tuesday evening here at BCB After Dark: the grooviest gathering of night owls, early risers, new parents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,114,735,138,24,4245,161,39,52650,5173,774,2000,37,4,40,110,468,9281,4271,22139,142,313],"class_list":{"0":"post-368305","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-blake-snell","10":"tag-cade-horton","11":"tag-chicago","12":"tag-chicago-cubs","13":"tag-chicagocubs","14":"tag-cubs","15":"tag-dodgers","16":"tag-elimination-games","17":"tag-jameson-taillon","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-matthew-boyd","20":"tag-michael-busch","21":"tag-mlb","22":"tag-phillies","23":"tag-roki-sasaki","24":"tag-shohei-ohtani","25":"tag-the-brewers","26":"tag-the-cubs","27":"tag-the-yankees","28":"tag-yankees","29":"tag-yoshinobu-yamamoto"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115336949514309608","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}